We go out for coffee, and meantime nearly 9 billion habitable planets have been found

Over at Evolution News & Views, David Klinghoffer notes a recent claim making the rounds that at least 8.8 billion Earth-size, just-right planets have been found, enough for every Earthling to have their own, with some summer planets available as well.

Found? “Found” is the new “extrapolated.”

The findings also raise a blaring question, Marcy said: If we aren’t alone, why is “there a deafening silence in our Milky Way galaxy from advanced civilizations?”

Better still, why must some joker always come along and ask a question that spoils the fun?

Hard to say. The discovery hinges, we are told, on the fact that the astronomers calculated rather than estimated. As Klinghoffer puts it,

Oh. They calculated in the sense of “extrapolating” to “come up” with a figure. In other words, they estimated. The figure of “8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets in the habitable temperature zone” comes down a bit too when you talk about actual planets that have been observed instead of being merely conjectured and “calculated.” More.

They didn’t say they observed any planets. Only ten Earthlike planets have been found to circle the Sun in a habitable zone.

All the rest is one astronomical extrapolation. And the Copernican Principle (that Earth cannot be special or unusual) confers on it the status of science, beyond question or reproach.

15 Responses to We go out for coffee, and meantime nearly 9 billion habitable planets have been found

Thanks for reading the article. I saw the headline and knew it couldn’t have any facts. Venus and Mars are both “Earth-like”. One is a fiery hell whose average surface temperature will melt lead. The other is a frozen hell with no useable atmosphere.

Oh, by any chance are these the same “billions and billions” of habitable planets that Sagan used to go on about?

What they don’t realize is that they are adding to the matter in universe, and as we know, if the matter percentage increases, the Omega>1 and the universe will not be Flat(which is the current ‘proven’ fact)but closed like a sphere. So either believe universe is flat or believe that there are more planets.They can’t have it both ways. If they believe universe is ‘closed’ then they have to disprove that Cosmic Background Radiation picture and Planck data is wrong.

There will always be some extrapolation, as it is impossible, given our technology, to do an exhaustive survey of the galaxy. Thus, the best that can be done is survey a reasonable sample size and then estimate from there.

Now one may perhaps have a legitimate disagreement about the sample size. One could quibble about the size of the habitable zone. One could point to other parameters that are required to sustain life.

But it seems a bit over the top to complain so vociferously about the idea of billions of Earth-size planets. Does it really make any difference to News if it turns out to be millions instead of billions?

I would also point out that the source article did not claim there were 8.8 billion planets with all the conditions necessary to support life. No-one has claimed anything about water, plate tectonics, magnetic fields, etc. All they have said is: “based on the survey of stars we have done to date, with the entire galaxy there are likely x number of planets of y size in location zone z.” This is a perfectly legitimate approach to take.

Again, it is perfectly reasonable to call people on the carpet — forcefully — if they think the mere existence of planets in the habitable zone means there will be life there, or worse, that life will be there because it naturally arises through material processes.

However, the regular and repeatedly-negative News OP’s here at UD do not seem careful enough to make that distinction. Any claim of other earths, or planets in the habitable zone, seems to receive only scorn and derision. Frankly, it makes News seem like there is some kind of agenda behind the derisive commentary.

Let’s be more careful to distinguish between: (i) the search for habitable planets beyond Earth, which is a careful, objective, scientific endeavor; and (ii) claims about life being ubiquitous because the speaker thinks it will naturally arise through material and natural processes.

There is no reason to rail against the former; and if another planet with many of the key characteristics of Earth is ever found this more objective approach will also result in significantly less egg on the face.

Well said. However, the unspoken reason for announcing with great fanfare the probable existence of billions of “habitable” planets is that the scientists making the announcement believe that the finding increases the chance that life exist elsewhere. It does not, not by a long shot.

Nobody can calculate the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe unless one has a falsifiable origin of life theory based on naturalistic principles. No such theory exists and, from the looks of it, none will exist in the foreseeable future. Any claim to the contrary is pure superstition, not science.

Does it really make any difference to News if it turns out to be millions instead of billions.

Yes because it would mean there would be less matter and we will have a open universe – as Omega will be less than 1 – instead of ‘Flat’ universe. It would mean our galaxy and planets will be orbiting closer than they are now. The ‘Goldilocks’ of life sustaining parameters like Earth’s exact distance from sun, the perfect orbit which ensures Earth doesn’t fly off and that water remains water will be be disturbed. Earth would have not existed if a few billions turned to few million or even if it were reversed. Adding arbitrary number of galaxies does change a lot of scientific equations of life.

selvaRajan, I think you misunderstand what is being claimed. They are not announcing the existence of new matter in the universe. They are merely saying that they have calculated (or extrapolated) that many of the planets orbiting the existing stars are probably in the habitable zones of those stars.

If this stuff passes for actual science, then I will become anti-science.

What stuff?

The search for exoplanets is as scientific an endeavor as any.

Again, let’s have the intellectual clarity of thought to distinguish between the hunt for exoplanets and the materialistic notion that life must be ubiquitous in the galaxy because it naturally arises through material processes when the physical conditions are right.

Indeed, let’s even be careful enough to distinguish (i) that latter materialistic notion from (ii) the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the galaxy.

Off topic: This morning I was wondering, when Stephen Meyer wrote a book on origin of life, Biologos claimed that its about Neo-Darwinism and tried to defend it. When Meyer actually wrote a book on Neo-Darwinism, they seem so silent. Wondering why

Life in the Universe: Foundations of Carbon-Based Life Leave Little Room for Error – Mar. 13, 2013
Excerpt: “The Hoyle state of carbon is key,” Lee says. “If the Hoyle state energy was at 479 keV or more above the three alpha particles, then the amount of carbon produced would be too low for carbon-based life.
“The same holds true for oxygen,” he adds. “If the Hoyle state energy were instead within 279 keV of the three alphas, then there would be plenty of carbon. But the stars would burn their helium into carbon much earlier in their life cycle. As a consequence, the stars would not be hot enough to produce sufficient oxygen for life. In our lattice simulations, we find that more than a 2 or 3 percent change in the light quark mass would lead to problems with the abundance of either carbon or oxygen in the universe.”http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....182310.htm

From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 MeV energy level in the nucleus of 12 C to the 7.12 MeV level in 16 O. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? … I am inclined to think so. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has “monkeyed” with the physics as well as the chemistry and biology, and there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. –
Sir Fred Hoyle, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982): 16.

The part about being so confident about a wild extrapolation and trying to hide the fact. I don’t care if these planets are actually found to exist. I don’t care that it is an extrapolation. I care that the confidence and boastful tone is way out of proportion to what has actually been accomplished, and that what has been accomplished isn’t made more clear and up front. It is a deliberate tactic to sway opinion about the Principle of Mediocrity.

BBC Radio 4 Science programme just mentioned that Wallace’s name should be alongside Darwin. He is the man behind the Natural selection of species. Also a spiritist. His theory was NOT taken up until the 30s, much as it now seems to us all a continuum since Darwin. The 30s was the era of Hitler and super race theory, and Wallace got prominence because Royalty gave him an award. Hmmm. Suspicious.
Not relevant to your article…but the programme was on just now.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace

If we’re talking about calculating the number of (i) Earth-size planets, (ii) around stars similar to the Sun, (iii) in the habitable zone, then it is a pretty straight-forward calculation. Again, we can quibble about a few details here and there, but this is perfectly legitimate science — as much as anything is.

On the other hand, if we’re talking about the likelihood of life existing elsewhere as a result of purely natural and material processes, then, yes, those proclaiming the likelihood of such things need to be called on the carpet, and forcefully so.

I’m just trying to make sure we are carefully distinguishing between the two. The repeatedly negative tone and the throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater attitude that seems to prevail often here at UD with respect to the search for exoplanets isn’t helpful and, worse, doesn’t demonstrate a careful grasp of the issues at play.

Eric Anderson @ 14: The search for exoplanets isn’t the problem. It’s getting the funding to actually do anything about it. Many think that mankind’s future lies in space exploration.

True, space exploration continues with the flight of space shuttles near the earth and the launching of instruments to probe space. But what about living in outer space? Although there is talk of extended spaceflight by humans, there are at present no definite working plans to colonize the moon or any of the nearby planets—much less the other galaxies. Really, the colonizing of outer space by human efforts is not a realistic option in the near future. And current space programs of various nations cost so much that they are being scaled back or abandoned.